The Last Word (33 page)

“Convince me,” she said.

“Does it matter? If I was in your position, I’d sacrifice me to Elias Stewart regardless of the truth to save myself.”

“I’m not you,” she said.

“Right. You’re a much better person,” Sweeney said. “I’m sure that just before Mercy Reynolds, Rusty Konrath, and Neal Burnside got a bullet between the eyes, they were thinking what a wonderful human being you are.”

“I killed them for you, remember? And although I may be a killer, I don’t betray my friends.”

“Are we friends?” Carter Sweeney asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Really? I thought we were simply two resourceful people who shared a mutual interest.”

“So if you didn’t kill Jack Stewart, who did?”

“What you should be asking is how did Elias Stewart get to you?”

Olivia scowled at him. “That’s easy. Noah Dent, our friend in Phoenix. I tried to reach him, but he’s disappeared.”

Right after his anticipated visit from Mark Sloan, Sweeney thought. It was a troubling development.

“Where’s Mark Sloan?” Sweeney asked.

“He’s also gone,” she said. “He was staying at a hotel in Denver. His car and his stuff are still there. The hotel management called the police this morning. Housekeeping found blood all over his room.”

It was obvious to Sweeney what had happened. Elias got to Mark and made him talk. For all of Mark Sloan’s many faults, the one thing he wouldn’t have done was help a mobster intent on bloody revenge. Mark was far too principled for that. The old fool. So if Mark gave up Dent, then it meant Elias had broken the good doctor. Probably permanently. After that, breaking Dent would have been easy for Elias.

Sweeney hated Mark, but the likelihood that the doctor was dead was a big disappointment. He didn’t want to be denied the joy of Mark’s long-term suffering.

This changed everything. Elias wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d killed anyone even remotely connected with his nephew’s death. Since Sweeney didn’t know who was responsible, the only way to save himself would be to offer up a suitable fall guy.

Or woman.

Olivia Morales was the natural choice. The question now was how to make that happen and how to convince Elias that she’d acted on her own.

Actually, it would be easy.

“It’s clear to me what’s happened,” he said. “One of Elias Stewart’s rivals saw an opportunity to take out Jack and make it look like someone else was responsible. It’s what I would do if I was one of them, if only to distract him and destabilize his operations.”

“Perhaps you did,” Olivia said. “Perhaps that’s the deal you had to strike to get Malcolm Trainor and his buddies to sacrifice their funeral home operations for your frame against Amanda Bentley to work.”

“I didn’t, but you may still be on to something,” Sweeney said. “Trainor may be the one responsible for this. Do you know how to reach Elias Stewart?”

“He gave me a number,” she said. “It’s probably for one of those disposable cell phones.”

“Next time you meet, he’ll kill you, even if you deliver me or someone else to him.”

“I know,” she said.

“Give me the number and run,” Sweeney said. “I’ll call him and try to convince him that Trainor is the one he wants.”

In fact, Sweeney had no intention of calling Elias. He would contact Trainor and, through the Mob accountant’s sources, get word to Elias that Morales had killed Jack on her own and was now on the run. Sweeney hoped that after killing Mark, Dent, and Morales, Elias’s bloodlust would be sated.

“And if you fail?” Olivia asked.

“We’re no worse off than we are right now.”

“How do I know you won’t pin everything on me?”

“You don’t,” Sweeney said. “But again, you will be no worse off. You’ll be gone and I’ll still be here. I’m the one who is the most vulnerable.”

“You’re damn right you are,” she said. “Just remember, I can prove that you arranged the entire frame against Steve Sloan and his friends. I’m the one person who can take you down.”

“Believe me, I know,” Sweeney said, and found himself glad that things were working out this way.

Olivia’s cell phone rang. She yanked it off her belt and answered it. The caller’s voice on the other end was loud enough for Sweeney to hear.

“We are so glad to hear that,” a man’s voice said.

“Hear what?” Olivia said.

“That you can prove what I’ve been saying about Carter Sweeney all along.”

When Elias Stewart shot Olivia Morales and kept her busy, one of his goons must have placed a listening device in her phone.

“I didn’t know,” she mumbled to Sweeney.

He held his hand out for the phone. Olivia, stunned, handed it to him. He leaned over the railing and peered past her to Mark’s house.

Mark stood on his deck, a phone to his ear, another man standing beside him. The doctor waved at him.

“Good news, Sweeney,” Mark said. “They’ve kept your cell for you.”

“The man beside you,” Sweeney said. “Dr. Jack Stewart, I presume.”

“Alive and well,” Mark said.

And in that moment, Sweeney saw the entire scheme that had ensnared him, one that hinged on the same assumptions about Mark Sloan’s character that had enabled his own plan to work.

He didn’t feel anger. He didn’t feel disappointment. He didn’t feel anything at all.

The front door burst open and a team of men in FBI Wind-breakers rushed into the house, guns drawn. The one in the lead, a middle-aged man with gray hair, flashed his ID.

“Barton Feldman, FBI,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

The sky was a clear and cloudless blue, the smog blown out to sea or into the Valley by a cool wind that made the heat not only bearable but pleasant. The waves were frothy and dappled with light and, in the distance sailboats jumped over the swells.

The long picnic table on the beach behind Mark Sloan’s house was covered with the leftovers of lunch: BBQ tri-tip, potato salad, fruit, and seashell casserole. Steve, Amanda, Jesse, Susan, Tanis, and Jack were enjoying their generous portions of homemade Chocolate Decadence à la Sloan as Mark, who sat at the head of the table, finished filling them in on everything that had happened.

They all knew, of course, that Sweeney was back in Sunrise Valley and that Olivia Morales and Noah Dent had agreed to testify against him in return for whatever leniency was possible for themselves—which, in Olivia’s case, meant sparing her from death.

What they weren’t so clear on was how Mark had managed to pull off the con that allowed Tanis to stop running and freed the rest of them from jail.

First, Mark told them, he carefully set the stage by calling just about everyone in the Denver phone book and leaving messages for Jack, so word would get around that he was desperate and overwrought, which wasn’t all that far from the truth.

He called in the debt that Barton Feldman owed him and convinced the former Denver-based FBI agent to arrange for an unidentified cadaver to be put in Jack’s car during the night. Jack himself rigged the bomb and purposely engaged his pretty neighbor in conversation so there would be a witness to his death.

In reality, Jack was safely hidden behind the Dumpster in his driveway when he activated the bomb, and then he easily slipped away in the flames and confusion.

Feldman visited Jack’s dentist, swapped the cadaver’s X-rays with Jack’s to assure a positive ID, and the con was set in motion.

Mark put the surveillance devices that Tanis had given him to good use, leaving a bug behind in Dent’s office, which captured Dent’s call to Olivia. He also gave a bug to Elias, who had one of his men plant it in her cell phone while she was pinned to the ground under his foot.

“Was Elias in on the con?” Steve asked.

Mark shook his head. “It was crucial that Elias believe that Jack was really dead, to ensure that his rage was genuine. I wanted Dent and Morales to see the pain and fury in his eyes. I knew that would sell the con better than any tricks I could come up with.”

Steve glanced at Jack. “Is Dad going to have to look over his shoulder the rest of his life?”

“I ironed things out with Uncle Elias,” Jack said. “He understands why doing this was important to me and that I paid a big price for it. That said, he’s doubly glad he gave Mark that beating now.”

Mark still looked like a prizefighter who’d lost in the sixth round.

“How did you fake blowing up your Bentley?” Jesse asked.

“I didn’t,” Jack said. “That was the big price I was talking about. I’m expecting to get reimbursed, which is why I’m so glad to hear that you all got offered your old jobs back.”

“I didn’t,” Mark said. “As long as Janet Dorcott is there, I’m not welcome in the building.”

“We are, but we’re not so sure we’re going to accept their offer,” Susan said.

“They don’t really want us,” Jesse said. “It was more of a publicity gesture.”

“I don’t know if I’d ever feel comfortable working there again,” Susan said.

“The same goes for me,” Amanda said. “They’ve shown just how little faith they have in me and my integrity.”

“I’m not exactly rushing to return to the LAPD either,” Tanis said. “I’ll face disciplinary action for the covert ops we did for Masters. And I have a bad feeling that they’ll find a basement below the basement to stick me in.”

Jack looked at Steve. “What about you?”

Steve shrugged. “Maybe I’ll become a private eye. I hear they get all the girls.”

Jack sighed. “Looks like I’ll be driving a Festiva for a little longer than I had planned.”

“This is a good thing,” Mark said.

“You’ve obviously never driven a Festiva,” Jack said.

“What I mean is, we’re about to enter a new chapter in our lives,” Mark said. “We have a world of possibility in front of us.”

“We do?” Jesse asked.

“You have possibility,” Jack said. “I have a Festiva.”

For the first time in ages, Mark didn’t know what tomorrow held for him. It was exciting and scary, but in a good way. He felt revitalized, as if he’d been given a second chance at life.

Perhaps he had.

Perhaps all of them had.

The question now was what they would all do with the opportunity they’d been given.

Whatever path they chose, he knew one thing would never change.

They would always be a family.